Jamie Sugar 280Mapa Digital Research Diary

For our weekly task on the post digital body, I took the reins. I knew I’d be away the following week for a placement assessment and unable to contribute so it seemed fair. I decided to make something of a montage with a voice over so viewers could easily see examples of the concepts we had looked at in class. I really enjoy editing so this task was a delight for me.  I found that this week’s task really made me think about the future of humankind, and what it means to be a person in a physical sense. With the growth of artificial intelligence and advancements with robots like ‘Sophia’, are we blurring the lines between person and machine a little too much? At what point does Sophia get a passport or human rights? If we were able to somehow transpose our consciousness onto a hard drive and live as avatars piloting machine bodies, would we still be human? If we can from man, but end up as something else physically, which aspect of our behind defines who we are? One of my favou...

"Monetary interfaces have been developing and providing added value services to consumers, limiting the use of cash and of other paper based payment methods, effectively laying the foundations for a cashless society." In this reading, I can understand the value of a cashless society; instantaneous transactions, money sent from country to country with ease and immediacy, etc. However, what I find disturbing in a lot of readings and theories on modernity and post-modern society, is where those less fortunate end up as a consequence. How, in a modern 'cashless society' can one donate to charity when walking down the street? How can one give spare change freely, especially if the recipient is not in possession of a device which would enable an instant transfer? Readings on the modern and post modern world seem to eradicate possibility for many things which are commonplace today. "IT companies, which are simultaneously the producers of the devices, their softwar...

In our seminar session we looked at money and moreover, the concept of money. Our attention was drawn to a £5 note, on which read "I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of five pounds".    This made me think: if paper money is just a promise, how much money is there actually ? Is anyone keeping track? Does the amount of cash money equal the same as the amount of money in banks? How can you lose a promise? The mint prints more money every day to make up for the notes which are lost, destroyed or damaged, but how much do they print so that they know the value of the pound wont fall? Needless to say, the revelation that a physical bank note is only the promise of a monetary value was disturbing.  We also looked at Bitcoin and watched a documentary on its establishment. The documentary highlighted how one of bitcoins founders was arrested for supplying the currency to someone who went on to sell illegal drugs online, prompting another bitcoin employee t...

“Here a subject (the white nationalist, the average white man, the white housewife, the white working man, the white citizen, and the white Christian farmer) is presented as endangered by imagined others whose proximity threatens not only to take something away from the subject (jobs, security, wealth), but to take the place of the subject. In other words, the presence of these others is imagined as a threat to the object of love” The above quote from this reading was undertaken in Nazi Germany in the 1940’s, but in a lot of ways I feel that it still rings true today. With Brexit taking the forefront of our political and socio-geographic landscape at the moment, xenophobia, racism and politics of fear have been used to coerce people’s feelings in regards to immigrants and people of different ethnic groups. The BBC reported that following the Brexit vote, “ 33 out of 44 British police forces saw their highest levels of hate crime reports since the current system of records began...

 Our look into aesthetics and space in the post digital world, lead us to London for a trip to the Tate Modern. Modigliani, an exhibition on the life and work of Italian painter and sculptor Amadeo Clemente Modigliani, featured numerous works and a virtual reality experience (the main event). First things first, I have never been particularly impressed by virtual reality headsets. More often than not they are clunky and ineffective, making the wearer go cross-eyed and uncomfortable. This, however, was something else entirely. As soon as I put on the virtual reality headset, a huge smile spread across my face (which I quickly had to wipe off through fear of looking quietly ridiculous). The space the headset transported me too was so different to that of the room I was actually in, a small, dimly lit studio with a window looking out at Paris. I noticed something peculiar during my time in the headset; my brain was filling in gaps. I could see and hear what was happening in the ...